Guglielmo Marconi

Step by step he overcame countless technical difficulties, battling seemingly insurmountable problems of physics and engineering as his embryonic system began to take shape.

It was also a battle for public, press, commercial, military and scientific acceptance. It quickly became a war of money and ideas as Marconi fought against international and state sponsored competitors who deployed every form of industrial espionage and legal challenge. Each was determined to claim a piece of the new science and try to take control of what was becoming a new industrial revolution.

In the end it was only Marconi who won through. He had the vision, self belief and force of character to build a working system and prove it under the harshest of climates. In doing so he built a huge company and a whole new industry, straight from the laboratory bench.

But it was a close run thing. Many times during the first five years he nearly lost the race to tame Heinrich Hertz's wireless waves. But what he achieved on bleak windswept cliffs and basement laboratories around Britain's shores changed the world as we know it.